


Stoplight

by Iggytheperson



Category: Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Fucked Up Circumstances, Intrusive Thoughts, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 08:50:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20306764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iggytheperson/pseuds/Iggytheperson
Summary: The life and times of Osamu Ichijouji, in a different world where that life lasted longer.





	1. Chapter 1

Osamu thinks getting angry is kind of like a volcano erupting. It’s technically supposed to happen, because that’s part of earth’s system for not imploding on itself, and it would probably be a bit weird and maybe even a bad thing if it didn’t happen. But when it does happen, it makes a big mess and is generally just a terrible experience for everyone involved.

And people who live around active volcanoes tend to know when it’s a bad time to be near. They’ll get far away from the volcano so it doesn’t hurt them.

That’s why baby brothers and sisters hide when they can see that their siblings have had a bad day. That’s why being angry is like being a volcano.

For this reason, Osamu can’t help but wonder if maybe volcanoes don’t want to explode. If maybe they feel bad afterwards too, when it’s all over and they realize what they’ve done.

Volcanoes don’t have feelings though, they’re inanimate. That’s what all the books say, anyways. But maybe, the real truth is that the volcanoes feelings are so different and so much more complex than a tiny human’s feelings that humans can’t comprehend it. Volcanoes are much, much older than humans, after all, and what’s older is supposed to be wiser.

Or at least, that’s what everyone who’s older than Osamu tends to say.

Though a lot of adults, specifically the ones who say that, actually seem to be very stupid. Huh.

Really, what the expression is probably trying to say is that you get smarter as you grow, so it’s likely for older people to know more things. And that’s a perfectly fine way of thinking about things, up until the moment where idea gets conflated with ‘I’m older, so I know better than younger people by default.’ This is the mistake that causes all the problems. Because really, even if you know lots of things, you can’t know what someone wants until they tell you. But because they’re older and think that they’re wiser, some adults think that they can guess that stuff without having to ask.

So what happens is, they assume what Osamu wants, and then they make decisions for him because they know how to get Osamu to the goal that he’s not actually interested in. And because they think they’re right, nobody asks Osamu how he feels, or listens when he tries to tell them, and so he never gets to tell anyone and the feelings have to stay in his head.

There’s another phrase adults use, though, one that isn’t just a misconception and is actually just completely stupid.

The phrase is: “You’ll understand when you’re older.” And this is what Osamu is told whenever he tries to say that he doesn’t want to do something or that he hates this or that he’s uncomfortable and unhappy.

And it’s the stupidest thing really. Because what does it matter if he understands later? He’s upset right now, why would he care if it makes sense in twenty years?

He knows why he’s supposed to care. It’s because they want him to grow up to be an amazing, sparkling person who makes everyone go “Wow!” That’s why they tell him these things, it’s all to secure his future as someone who he doesn’t want to be.

It was a simple mistake. He seemed to like it at first, because he thought being a cool famous person was going to be fun. So they got the impression that he liked it and they never thought about whether or not that opinion could change.

But it has changed, and he doesn't like it. He hates hates hates it. For plenty of good reasons, too. Not just because he’s too young to understand or any other stupid reason the adults insist he’s using.

The first reason is that having everyone hear what you have to say isn’t actually fun. Not that they actually let him say anything of his own, they just give him lines and don’t let him speak for himself, but those words are heard by lots and lots and lots of people. And he doesn’t like those words, a lot of the time, and he wants to put them back in his mouth so nobody hears them anymore. But because it’s tv, everyone hears them, and everyone hears his stutter and hears the producer lady laugh about it and laugh when Osamu goes off script to say what he wants to say. And all the people watching laugh, too, probably. And he hates it. He hates it so much.

And it makes him feel icky, and the makeup feels icky, and everyone at school stares at him all the time like he’s some mythical creature or an alien or something, and that makes him feel icky. And if he does something that isn’t all the way, 100% right, they say it’s horrible, and that makes him feel icky. And all the people at the studio make him feel super duper icky. Especially his manager, and some of her friends that hang around a lot. Because she squishes his cheeks whenever she sees him no matter how many times he says he doesn’t like that, and she and all the other ladies laugh at him when he says he doesn’t like being called cute or ‘a pretty little thing’. And whenever they smile at him, it makes him feel upset, somehow, like something died in his stomach and is rotting in there now.

And another annoying thing is that he’s not allowed to do stuff anymore. Or at least, nothing fun. He has a rubiks cube for when he has to sit somewhere for a long time, but every other minute is being dragged onto a set or being told to pose for the camera. There’s no fun reward for any of it, either. It’s just stupid thing after stupid thing and there’s no more fun to be had anymore, because if he uses his few hours of free time to play, he won’t do perfect in school, which means he’ll have a flaw and won’t be the best, and then mommy and daddy won’t love him anymore, like how they don’t love Kenny.

But sometimes he thinks that would be better, really. Sometimes he thinks he should take a hammer and hit himself with it until all the smart falls out. And then nobody would love him, and nobody would care about him, and he wouldn’t have to do anything that isn’t fun anymore because no one would care enough to tell him not to play in the road or tell him that getting mud on his face is unsightly.

That might be really sad and lonely though. So it’s probably better if he just shuts up and keeps being perfect for everyone. No matter how much he hates it. If he stops being perfect, mommy and daddy will stop loving him, and then Kenny might not love him either, because Osamu won’t be the cool awesome loveable big brother anymore.

Maybe he would, though. Maybe Kenny would love him anyways just because Osamu’s the only one who loves him back and takes care of him. That’s kind of sad, but maybe he could make it work. Osamu can beat all the smart out of himself, and then he and Kenny can sit in the background blowing bubbles and colouring pictures and playing, and mommy and daddy won’t drag Osamu away for anything.

That might be nice.

But sitting on the bathroom floor, with the hammer in his hand, Osamu can’t bring himself to do the deed. Not because he suddenly realizes how poorly reasoned this idea is, he’s not really afraid of any problems that might come of giving himself brain damage, but because it occurs to him that his family would be very, very sad if he accidentally died in the process. He doesn’t want to make anyone sad, he wants all the bad things to stop.

He can be ok with no one loving him, he can be ok with dying, too. But he doesn’t want to hurt his family. He needs to come up with a better plan, one that won’t make anyone sad.

So Osamu sneaks the hammer back into the toolbox and abandons it in the bathroom. And goes back to being the wonderful, perfect little boy he’s supposed to be.

Months pass, report cards come and go, schedules become tighter, and one day Osamu wakes up and realizes he doesn’t remember the last time he felt happy. And it’s upon this realization that being perfect suddenly seems a lot harder. Because he notices it, now. Notices that nothing his parents say about how proud they are makes him feel good anymore. “We love you, Osamu.” has lost its meaning and hearing it makes him feel more empty than it does happy. He doesn’t like that feeling. 

He’s not alone in that, though. Ken doesn’t seem to feel happiness anymore either. It’s no wonder, really. Osamu doesn’t have time to play with him anymore, so he’s all alone, and all he ever gets is Osamu snapping at him to go away when he tries to ask for some playtime. And Osamu is always in a bad mood again by the next time they get a chance to talk, so there’s never really a moment where he can say he’s sorry. He just sits by himself while he’s at school and contemplates what an awful, terrible brother he is.

And that must mean everyone is wrong about him being perfect, then, huh? Because a perfect brother wouldn’t get angry all the time. And he wouldn’t want to run away from his life, and he wouldn’t make any mistakes for people to yell at him over. He’d be happy to take care of his brother all the time and he’d never have any trouble with anything. So really, all of Osamu’s problems exist because he isn’t perfect enough. If he was perfect, all of this would be manageable. But he isn’t, he’s none of the things everyone says he is, so he can’t do any of the things they want him to without it hurting. He’s just no good.

He needs to hide this discovery. Imperfect sons aren’t lovable. So he needs to cover up every little bad part of him so all that’s left is the shiny bits that everyone loves so much. Not that he cares what _everyone_ thinks, rather, he kind of wishes mom and dad’s expectations didn’t align so closely with the rest of the world’s, but he doesn’t really get a say in that. Mom and dad love him just as the world loves him: as a perfect super genius boy who can do anything. So that’s who he has to be if he wants anyone to love him, whether he likes it or not.

If heaven is a real place, Osamu hopes the angels make it so that he doesn’t have to be around the world anymore. And if that could be the case, he hopes he dies soon.

And so again, and again, and again and again and again, Osamu finds himself with a hammer in his hand, and he’s looked up how to do it right a million times by now, but his arms always shake too much for him to do it. He wants to. So bad. He wants to beat his head until it breaks, whether that means he wakes up an unlovable thing or he never wakes up at all. But he can’t, can’t, because his arms are shaking and he can’t see because he’s crying now and-

And his baby brother has found him, and he’s asking what’s wrong.

He can’t see Ken through all the crying, just pink and skin-coloured blotches, but he hears that soft little voice that never deserved any of the things that made it so timid. “Big brother…? What’s wrong…?”

Osamu doesn’t answer the question, he just grabs the blob of colour and pulls it close, in something less like a hug and more like some kind of snake trying to squeeze the life out of its prey. He knows, he hears Ken whimpering in pain, but he can’t let go anymore, trapping Ken to his chest. What a horrible boy he is.

“...B-big brother…? It’s...it’s ok...please don’t cry…” Even now, sweet little Kenny tries to help his big brother out. How did he even end up this way with someone like Osamu taking care of him?

“...I’m sorry, Ken. I’m sorry I’m no good to you. And I’m sorry for all the times I don’t say sorry, and that I don’t know how to fix myself.” Osamu’s bites his lip to try and keep from crying anymore. It doesn’t work, but then Ken reaches up and pats the tears away for him, so soft like how Osamu could never hope to be. Ken doesn’t say anything, just looks up at his brother with big confused eyes, unable to do anything to escape the arms pinning him down, and Osamu just keeps crying. “It’s...it’s scary, it’s all so scary, I wish I could just disappear…!”

He’s pitiful, unable to do so much as keep up the performance of the amazing, fearless big brother Ken loves so much. Maybe he’s just a lost cause...

Ken gives him a soft squeeze, and Osamu’s brain shuts up for a second. His brother looks terrified, but somehow really determined, and he’s clearly trying to squeeze Osamu as hard as he possibly can, maybe in an attempt to reciprocate the vice grip he’s stuck in. 

...Ken’s probably too weak to be anything other than soft, huh?

In spite of the tears still running down his face, Osamu snorts with laughter. Ken peers up at him, blinking in confusion. Osamu smiles at him and loosens his death grip to be a bit less vicious. “You’re a weird kid, Kenny.”

Ken blushes and lowers his head, hiding his tomato face in Osamu’s shirt. Osamu ruffles his hair. “Thanks kiddo. I love you.”

“...I love you too, Osamu.”

Osamu wishes there were more honest kids, like Ken. More honest kids who say nice things because they’re nice, and not because they want you to make them popular or because you’re the cute boy who’s all over all the magazines and if they get you to like them, maybe they’ll be all over the magazines too.

But kids aren’t like that, and Osamu can’t really stomach the thought of being friends with anyone who’s only really interested in the fake, perfect Osamu. 

So Osamu doesn’t have any friends.

That thought seems kind of lonely, at first, but considering how much more lonely it would be to be surrounded by people who don’t actually like you, Osamu thinks this is a good decision on his part. Having friends would be bad. Just Ken is fine.

But if having friends is bad, and doing things that are fun is also bad, what’s he supposed to do? No fun? Just be pushed around by creepy ladies all day? 

Is he even a kid if he’s not allowed to have fun?...Maybe he isn’t. Maybe his kid-ness is gone already. Actually, that could be the reason he’s not nice like Ken. That would explain it. He’s a grown up, and grown ups are bad and mean and stupid, so that’s why he can’t be nice like he wants to.

It would also at least somewhat explain why it is that he has to be the one to take care of Ken in the first place. He’d never understood why that was before he came to this conclusion, after all. He’d just sorta known that it was his job.

All children need an adult that loves them in order to grow properly, right? Yeah, so that makes sense now. Mom and dad don’t wanna do it, and Ken needs someone to raise him, so that makes it Osamu. Ok. Makes sense. 

But he doesn’t really know how to raise a kid, should he be looking into that? There are books for that kinda thing, right? Not that there would be any in this house…

Osamu turns to the internet. He finds these things called mommy blogs, that aren’t really helpful but are kinda funny. He saves a few of them to laugh at later and continues his search. He digs deeper, finds psychological studies, questionnaires posed to psychiatrists about what parents should be doing for their child in all kinds of situations. 

The most common theme, though, is that you need to be patient and understanding with a kid.

Hmm. That’s not good. That means Osamu is doing a bad job, right?

“Osamu, can we-”

“Not now Ken, I’m-” Wait no. That’s the wrong thing to be doing. “Uh, um...forget I just said that. What were you going to say, Kenny?”

Ken shuffles his feet, unsure whether it’s actually ok to speak. Osamu starts tapping his foot impatiently without thinking about that and realizing that’s a bad big brother thing to do. Ken cringes and starts stumbling through his request.

“I was...I was wondering if we could...play for a while…” 

It would be a good big brother thing if he were to say yes here. But that would also be a bad perfect son thing.

He needs to study to be good enough for mom and dad.

He needs to be a good big brother for Ken.

Why do those things have to fight each other?

“Uh...give me ten minutes, and I’ll come play with you, ok Ken?” He puts on his best reassuring smile. Ken doesn’t look particularly reassured by it.

“...I’m sorry...I know I’m not supposed to bother you while you’re studying, you don’t have to-”

“No, it’s fine.” Osamu reaches down and ruffles his brother’s hair. “It’s fine, ok? It’s super fine. I’ll come play with you. I just need to finish this one little bit.”

“Ok…” Ken nods and quietly shuffles his way out of the room.

Osamu turns back around and starts frantically speeding through the previously untouched homework. No more googling, he’s going to have to figure out how to raise Ken himself if he wants to have enough time to stay perfect for mom and dad, too. And he’ll also need to finish 20 pages of math in the next ten minutes.

No problem, he’s a genius, right?

He emerges from the bedroom 9 minutes later, arm throbbing all throughout from being continuously worked, in spite of a cramp so bad that it’d become near impossible to write by the end.

This will...probably get easier with time, or something. Yeah. He can do this. He doesn’t have to pick between his brother and his parents. He can do both. He can totally do both.

“Osamu!” Ken looks so surprised that Osamu actually came out to play with him. So surprised, and so, so excited.

“Hey little guy…” Osamu feels something in his chest warming up as he watches Ken bounce around in excitement. “So, what are we playing?” he asks, putting on the best smile he can to pave over his look of exhaustion.

“Tag!” Ken declares happily, tapping Osamu on the chest and running off.

Just the idea of having to run all around the house, already exhausted and two hours from having to go to a tv recording, is enough to make Osamu feel like keeling over and dying. But he grins, gets up, and follows after Ken, quickly catching up to his tiny legged brother, scooping him off the ground with a loud “Gotcha!” and tickling him all over.

His brother squirms and wriggles and hits Osamu’s arm, causing the strained muscle to wail even louder in pain, and Osamu can’t stop himself from hissing at the feeling of it. He’s lucky his brother is being loud enough to drown out that sound.

...This _will_ get easier with time, right?

Right?

He hopes this is gonna get easier, because right now it feels like this is going to kill him. Kill him deader than dead. That probably wouldn’t be too good for Kenny, seeing how Osamu is the only person who remembers he’s there.

Or maybe they would notice Ken was there if Osamu disappeared?

...Well, maybe. But they’re not very good at doing parent things anyways. So Ken would still be in trouble if Osamu died.

Alright, so no more thinking about hammers or anything else like that. Ken needs him here. So Osamu needs to stay, and be a good stand-in daddy and mommy to replace the ones that don’t care. He’ll listen when Ken says he’s upset and he doesn’t wanna do something, and he won’t tell him that he has to do it anyways, and if any lady looks at him with those creepy eyes he’ll make her go away, and he won’t tell him to smile and shake her hand. He’ll be a good parent. The best. He’ll even put those candies and ‘I love you’ notes in Ken’s lunch like what all the other kids in his class get.

“Why are you crying?” A small, concerned voice breaks into Osamu’s little brain world. Crying? Oh. Yeah, it would seem started crying at some point. And some of it landed on Ken’s face.

“...Well, uhm...I hurt my arm...That’s why…” Yeah. That’s gotta be it. 

“Your arm…?”

“...I...I wrote out all my homework really fast...since I...really, really wanted to play with you…”

“Really!?” Ken looks amazed for a moment, then guilty not two seconds later. “I’m sorry…”

“It’s ok, Ken...it’s big brother’s fault for messing that up. But it’s fine! It only hurts a little bit, I can keep playing!” Osamu puts on the best smile he can, which is, as it turns out, a very terrible one.

“...You’re lying…” Ken sounds somehow both pouty and concerned at the same time. Odd.

“No I’m not! I’ll prove it!” This is all the warning that’s provided before Osamu begins tickling Ken again. This is effective almost immediately. Ken squeals with laughter and rolls around in a desperate escape attempt, barely conscious of his surroundings and thusly making it very easy to wipe the remaining tears away with no further fuss or concern out of little baby brother.

Maybe he should tape the ducts shut so no more messes can happen.

“Osamu? Shouldn’t you be doing your homework right now?” The disappointed voice of dad makes Ken stop laughing in an instant. They both look up at him, arms crossed, stern. Osamu wants to shove him and tell him to go away.

“I finished it already.”

“Really? Even your essay?” Dad taps his foot, and Osamu makes a mental note to never ever tap his foot again.

“That’s not due for another week.” Osamu grumbles, rolling his eyes and fiddling with Ken’s hair. Why this now? He doesn’t want this. He wants to make Ken happy now. Hasn’t he done enough for mom and dad to be satisfied?

“You have a very busy schedule this week, Osamu.” His dad says, and his patience snaps like a twig.

“Well whose fault is that!?”

Before Osamu can think any more about what he’s doing, he gets up and storms off to his bedroom, slamming the door loudly. Great. Now mom and dad are going to come knocking and tell him about how they know this is hard but this is all very important and totally not stupid bullshit to get them money at all and they understand, they totally understand-

Like clockwork, there’s a knock on the door. His parents come in and sit on the bed with him. He feels his mother’s hand on his shoulder, and he zones out as the lecture starts going exactly as he expects it to. He casts his brain out to an imaginary space where nothing exists and nothing bothers him, and he hides there until he hears his parents leave.

He wishes he could hide in his brain forever. He goes about working on that essay instead, and finishes it just in time for him to be dragged off to the recording studio. He waves goodbye to Ken. 

He doesn’t get another chance to play with Ken for the next two months. This makes him angry, though he’s not sure what he’s angry at. But it must be something’s fault, and this shouldn’t be a normal occurrence. He’s already the only person Ken has, his brother should at least be able to have a playmate every once and awhile. Or better yet, whenever he wants one.

But the most upsetting thing of all, is that when he tells Ken that he finally has time to play, he gets an angry “No!” in response.

Oh. He chose mom and dad by accident.

And now Ken doesn’t love him anymore.

Well that’s...that’s all Osamu’s fault, isn’t it. He has nobody to blame but himself. He should’ve known this would happen. After all, nobody loves the real Osamu, why would Ken? He probably just realized what a good for nothing he is. This is his own fault. He’s a bad brother. A bad fake-parent, too. It’s all his fault.

So why does it hurt so much?

This is his own fault, he has no right to be feeling like this. He needs to stop crying. He needs to go apologize to Ken for being such a failure. It’s his responsibility to take care of Ken, after all, and if Ken shuts him out, then he won’t be able to reach him anymore. And Ken will grow up all wrong and bad like Osamu did.

So he puts the tape over his tear ducts and he knows he got his eyelashes stuck on it too and he knows that’s going to hurt like hell to take off but that doesn’t matter, what matters is that he’s been a bad brother and he needs to fix it before Ken grows up into a rotten thing like him.

He rushes out to try and find his brother. He finds his parents instead, telling him that his manger invited them over for dinner tonight and they’ll all be needing to leave right now. He doesn’t even think about how little he wants to be at his manager’s house for any reason, too distracted by Ken, standing behind them, forced into nice clothes to go somewhere Osamu-related and more than a little miserable about that. Anything he might’ve wanted to say dies in his throat as his parents drag the both of them along. He doesn’t know what to say, isn’t even sure if he could get any words out if he were to make an attempt, but as he’s placed in the back of the car with his brother, it feels almost like a brick wall is being stacked up in the middle, between them, keeping Ken away for the rest of forever.

His eyes itch as the tape keeps him from crying. And he just sits there miserably, not brave enough to get a word out of his stupid mouth, watching the wall get higher and higher and higher and higher.

They arrive, and the added pain of his manager having her hands all over him makes him feel like he might just puke.

All throughout the dinner, the stupid adults talk all about perfect little Osamu, as if they can’t even feel the little volcano about to blow right next to them. Osamu can, and Osamu doesn’t particularly feel like running away from it. He’d rather let it kill him.

He’s not sure whether he wants to cry or wants to scream, but that night, he passes out clutching a hammer, with thoughts of whether or not there’s a single thing he can do to fix this swirling around his brain. 

He probably can’t.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything is terrible and it’s always getting worse, and Osamu just wishes it would stop for once. Just once. But no. Just when he thinks Ken might’ve gotten past the whole “I hate big brother” thing, there’s a new issue here to make it worse. A weird object of which he does not understand the origin, that, for some goddamn reason, Ken is fascinated with stealing.

He has tried to explain to his baby brother that touching foreign and potentially dangerous things is something he shouldn’t do, but after his first initial outburst at Ken’s disregard for safety, his words have started falling on deaf ears. So it is kinda his own fault.

He’d thought his...reaction...to be reasonable at the time, Ken had been doing something he’d been told not to do for important reasons, being upset was a natural reaction to that. But upon reflection, it was shitty and so is he. He must’ve had his head screwed on wrong, maybe he’d spent too long trying to hold back his tears while his manager was babysitting him and he’d been waterlogged or something, but no matter the reason it wasn’t ok. He can’t afford to make mistakes like that. His parents can’t be relied on for anything, least of all to ensure that a kid doesn’t grow up to be the kind of good for nothing bag of crap that would hit his own brother. So Ken is relying on him, even if he doesn’t understand that yet.

And so he really ought to apologize for all that crap he did, seeing as Ken hating him kinda makes it harder to take care of him. 

But there’s a problem. Osamu doesn’t know how to apologize. Or at least, he doesn’t know how to do so in a way that won’t undermine the fact that Ken shouldn’t touch things he’s been specifically instructed not to touch. And letting that get undermined would arguably be even worse than Ken hating him. Because not touching things you shouldn’t touch is a life skill that children typically die if they don’t learn. And Ken is very, very determined to touch this particular thing, for some reason.

He could say sorry and then padlock the contraption, but he’s not entirely sure that would be effective in either regard. And also Ken stole it, so he can’t as of right now.

Ken is also getting more and more angry with him each time he asks for the thing back, so he really needs to hurry with that apology.

And so he spends the whole day thinking about it, zoning out through school, through having makeup smeared on his face, through being shoved in front of the cameras, and by the time he’s on his way home, he has a plan.

He finds Ken sitting on the bed, fiddling with some little black and grey toy, probably a tamagotchi or something. He coughs to make his presence known, and immediately, Ken frowns and turns around to face the wall instead of Osamu.

“Little bro.”

No answer.

“...Do you want me to read you a story?”

He doesn’t get an answer to that, either, but he certainly gets a reaction. Ken looks over his shoulder at him, first confused, then happy for a brief little moment before it turns into a suspicious glare immediately thereafter. Ok, maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.

Nonetheless, Osamu holds up the storybook hopefully. Ken stares at him for a long while, still pouting, long enough that Osamu is about to give up and put the book down. But then Ken gives a tiny nod, quick enough to be missed had he not been paying attention. Osamu chuckles and approaches to sit down on the bed with him. Ken remains pouty, refusing to look at him.

Not twenty minutes later, Ken is leaning against him and staring attentively at the book as his big brother reads to him. Cute. 

Though he’s still grumpy, still refusing to look at Osamu, as if he doesn’t want to admit that he’s not mad anymore. Not sure if that’s ok or if that’s a problem, but at least he got this far. This is a decent sorry. Decent enough for now, anyways.

But as always, everything gets worse. There’s a knock on the door, and then mom opens it, not bothering to wait for approval as per usual. “Dear, your manager just phoned and there’s a new tv program she thinks would be perfect for you. She sent me an email with the outline-” Ken looks angry now, no doubt because of their mom’s complete disregard for his existence. Osamu considers what to do about this for a few seconds. Then stands up, walks over to the door, slams it shut and locks it, ignoring the shouts of confusion that follow immediately after. He turns around and grins at Ken. “Stupid mom, right?”

Ken’s face morphs from confusion into the world’s biggest grin. “Yeah!”

Then mom starts banging on the door and he looks scared.

Osamu laughs it off though, comes back over to the bed and ruffles his hair. “What’s that face for? I slammed the door, I’ll be the one who gets in trouble.”

He swears he’s never seen so many emotions on Ken’s face. The kid goes from sad to smug to sad again, like he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling. Relatable. Also funny to watch.

Osamu starts reading again, but Ken is still distracted by the occasional banging on the door. “Don’t bother paying attention to it.” he interrupts his narration to scoff. “It’s just stupid mom.”

“...yeah…” Ken stares at the door almost longingly for a brief moment before laughing and repeating Osamu’s insult. “Stupid mom!”

Osamu snickers. “That’s right, stupid mom.”

He regrets this response in retrospect, once Ken is screaming it at her a month later. Not that Ken is being unreasonable, if he was Ken and his mom wanted to drag him out to do something for his brother on his own damn birthday, he’d be pretty pissed too. 

Their parents, however, don’t think Ken is being reasonable. Because they’re stupid.

“Who taught you to speak to your mother like that, Ken!?” 

Ken withdraws at the yelling for a moment, then points at Osamu. Oh. Fantastic. He almost feels like denying the claim, but then sees that Ken is on the verge of crying. Not a fun place to be in. 

...Fine, he’ll take the fall. “Sorry, dad, I was just-”

“Don’t you blame things on your brother, young man!” Wait what.

“Dad, it was me-”

For once, it’s him who’s being ignored. “You apologize to Osamu!”

Ken bursts into tears. Osamu has to stand up and move in front of him just to get his Dad’s attention. “He isn’t lying!”

“Osamu, you don’t need to make excuses for him.”

“I’m not!” He finds himself lighting up with rage, as always, because he isn’t being listened to, as always, and just once, _just once_, he was hoping his dad could actually pay attention to what he’s saying and _believe_ him instead of insisting that he’s just lying or making things up or somehow wrong just because it’s convenient for him-

His dad pushes past him, grabs his crying baby brother, tells him to say sorry for something he didn’t do right now or he’s grounded.

Ken screams “Fine!” and only then does dad let go of him. 

“...Well? What do you have to say to your brother?”

Ken glares at him, then glares at Osamu, mad, so mad, and he screams “I hate you!”

He runs off and locks himself in the bedroom. Osamu tries to follow him but can’t, stopped by his dad grabbing him. “It’s ok, Osamu, he just needs to have a time out.”

Huh. So that’s what it feels like to want to break someone’s hand.

“He’ll be fine. The screening is starting soon, ok? It’s only gonna happen one time, we can’t afford to miss it.”

“But it’s fine to miss Ken’s only nineth birthday.”

“Wh- Osamu, that’s not-”

He tugs himself out of his dad’s grip and follows Ken, knocking quickly before the stupid old man can catch up. “Can you let me in so I can give you your present? I’ll leave you alone afterwards.”

Seconds pass and they feel like minutes, and dad is getting too close for his liking by the time Ken reluctantly unlocks the door. Osamu runs in, closes it and locks it again. Dad starts knocking. He ignores him.

“I left it in my school bag, lemme grab it for you.” Osamu explains as his brother looks up at him with a glare that would almost make him look like a cartoon villain if not for how tiny he is. Osamu bolts over to his bag and digs through it. Where, where..oh, here.

Osamu pulls out a plastic see-through box, with a little cake inside it, snagged from the bakery next to the studio when nobody had been watching him like a hawk for once. “...I wanted to get you something better, but mom wouldn’t take me shopping…”

Ken takes it. He opens it, stares at the cake for a while, almost suspicious of it, like he thinks Osamu is trying to poison him. He chucks it, and it splatters on Osamu’s sweater.

“...I spent my whole allowance on that.” Osamu hisses.

Ken flinches and tenses up in fear.

Wait, fuck, no. No, that’s not right. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who made his little brother feel scared anymore. Fuck. Fuck!

He raises his arms up to motion that it’s ok, but the response this causes is another flinch. “Hey...hey, no...I’m not...I’m not mad…”

There’s not a hint of relief on his brother’s face.

It feels like his throat’s been glued together. He tries to say something, anything, but the result is just a strangled noise without any meaning in it.

He stares at his little brother, and Ken stares back. It’s awkward. That’s the only word for it. Awkward. An awkward, lingering space where it’s understood what went wrong on either side but no one really knows what to say or how to say it.

After a while, he manages to get something out, though it’s not what he wants to say. “I...I said I’d leave you alone…so uh...I guess…” He backs up towards the door, unable to look his brother in the eye.

His brother looks like he desperately wants to say something. He doesn’t. Osamu leaves.

He wishes he had a kinder, less rotten soul, so these things wouldn’t happen. He doesn’t remember it always being this hard to be a good brother. It used to be that he could just make bubble mix and cut up straws and that’s all his brother ever needed from him. It was ok, even if he couldn’t be as soft and caring as Ken was. He doesn’t know why it’s so hard now. Why everything is on his shoulders now instead of just the little things that were easy. But he just wishes he could be kinder. He thinks it would be a lot easier if that could be the case.

But it isn’t, he isn’t. So nothing changes. They just get worse. As usual. 

It starts to feel like Ken’s mind exists on a different planet, one where earth logic, his logic, is inapplicable in every way. Like Ken’s brain was wired with some weird alien emotions he wasn’t built to understand. And it’s not like it’s school, where he gets the impression that he just somehow missed the pamphlet for How To Be Normal 101. Because he doesn’t care about that. But he cares about this. He tries his very hardest to understand his baby brother. And everyone’s always saying he can do everything, so logic dictates that he should be able to do that. But he can’t. It doesn’t make sense. It feels like mom and dad must’ve adopted a martian or something.

And then, one day, the little guy comes home with a report card just as perfect as Osamu’s. That’s a day full of emotions. Pride, first and foremost. Then a mix of annoyance and sadness over how Ken holds it against him. Then anger, enough anger to make him want to break something. Because Mom and Dad don’t care. This is the best report card Ken’s ever gotten in his life, but oh they’re just so proud of the both of them. Even putting aside the fact that that’s the best compliment Ken’s ever gotten, that’s just completely cruel. Osamu didn’t do anything special, Ken did. This should be the moment where Ken’s allowed to have all the attention. Why are they even looking at Osamu? He didn’t do anything.

Just this once, Ken seems to be on the same page as him.

If there’s one thing that their parents are good at, it’s making their kids want to murder them.  
He’s almost distracted from his own anger with concerns over whether he might need to hold Ken back. Not because he isn’t completely within reason to strangle them, but Ken’s hands are too tiny for that, so he’d just piss them off and get grounded. And then he’d be even more mad, and also mad at Osamu, which wouldn’t be fun.

Another not fun thing is that this isn’t the last time Ken pulls off something geniusy. Far from it, in fact. Which is obviously horrible. But Osamu’s first attempt to communicate to Ken what a bad idea this whole thing is ends with getting screamed at about how he just misses being the only one smart enough to have mom and dad’s attention, which is dumb and not true, but now he doesn’t really know what else he can do short of bashing both of their heads in so that neither of them have to be smart. He can’t stomach the idea of hurting Ken again, either, and so there’s nothing he can do besides watch as Mom and Dad notice that they can put Ken on stage too, and then do so, and then start ignoring his complaints. 

In a miraculous event, he at least manages to convince them to sign Ken up with a different manager than the one Osamu has. This one is still a little...disconcerting, but she seems to understand the word “no.” It’s not much, but he’s managed to save Ken from something, at the very least. So thank god for that.

That’s all the miracle gets him, though. He can’t do much else to protect his little brother from the awful, scary adults. And Ken doesn’t like their bullshit any more than Osamu did. Watching Ken complain and be shut down is somehow even more infuriating than it happening to him, and so, pretty soon, Osamu finds himself having to work really, really, hard to hold himself back from attempting to seriously maim some of their producers. 

And he continues to wish, more than anything, that he could be a good big brother. That he could give Ken a hug and tell him that it doesn’t matter what the grown ups say, that he doesn’t need to wear all that makeup if he doesn’t want to, that he never has to touch a script again if that’s not what he wants to do. That he’s allowed to be a normal child, that he doesn’t have to push himself to be amazing and perfect in order to be loved.

He tries, and always fails. There’s just nothing he can do. But he keeps trying anyways. Ken is a good kid, Ken deserves to have someone try for him, at least. Even if that person is garbage at doing so.

Years pass, and Osamu takes to putting cakes on Ken’s bed when Ken’s not there so he doesn’t feel the need to throw them at the garbage again. On Osamu’s 13th birthday, he finds a little cake on his own bunk.

He cries so much he ruins it. Stupid Osamu. Why does anyone think he’s smart again?

Oh right, because everyone else is stupid too.

He’s not even sure why he’s still doing any of this. Mom and dad are so oblivious and so clearly only in love with their idealized version of him that it feels nauseating to have their attention. Perfect Osamu. Perfect perfect perfect perfect perfect. 

He wishes he could be his own person. But if you never leave your head, are you even a real person to begin with? Maybe the Osamu in his head doesn’t actually exist. That would explain why no one sees him. What’s on the outside is the only thing that exists. And everyone would be disappointed if the thing they liked got replaced with some other thing that suddenly showed up out of thin air. And again, everyone is stupid, but he already has enough unpleasant things coming in the mail as is.

There’s this actress girl under his manager’s thumb who’s been getting a lot of those mail bomb things since she did something people didn’t like. So that’s why he’s doing it, he supposes. Because he doesn’t want to get hurt.

He likes to think Ken might get sad if he got hurt, but he knows he’s just kidding himself.

Nobody loves Osamu. Nobody cares about Osamu.

This is just how it is, Osamu understands now. There’s no trying to be loved. It’s not gonna happen. He could try for a million years and it wouldn’t happen. He’s just as unloved as Ken, but he just didn’t notice it before because he thought his parent’s love was directed at him and he didn’t yet realize that everything was a lie.

The desire to not be in this position is present, but the hammer doesn’t look so friendly anymore. Fading into the background with Ken isn’t actually an option, he realizes. He’s already responsible for making Ken breakfast and lunch, their parents might not even remember to buy enough food for four people if he were to fade into obscurity with his little brother.

He’ll just have to keep being perfect for Ken’s sake, even if Ken doesn’t even believe that illusion. Ken is relying on him. Not for his emotional wellbeing, Osamu has already failed him there. Failed and failed to support him to the point that he’s lucky Ken’s head hasn’t splattered in the many times he’s been dropped on the floor. But Ken needs him all the same.

Or maybe he’s just telling himself that because he wants to have some worth outside of pretending to be the perfect son.

He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t understand anything anymore.

The world feels like a very empty place. Bustling with hollow people who have nothing real to say to him or offer him. There is nowhere that feels devoid of this. All the children at school in the midst of training to be normal just transform into the adults at the studio who’ve already been through that process. He doesn’t want to be around any of them.

Because of this, he often gets paired off with this one boy in his class who has also decided not to engage with normal people, but more because he likes to eat his own jacket and talk about slasher films than because he’s having some kind of existential crisis of meaning and disconnect with the world around him.

He finds, though, after a few months of avoiding conversation as he does with everyone, that this boy actually isn’t that hard to talk to. If he missed orientation day for how to be normal, this guy must’ve done the exact same, and probably on purpose. It doesn’t feel half as confusing as talking to the other kids in his class does. In fact, it’s kinda fun. The jokes are all crude and full of swears and they’re not the ones that everyone else says over and over again, and so they’re interesting, if for those reasons alone.

It’s also comforting that this boy is so completely and utterly disinterested in the fact that Osamu is a brilliant supergenius, and spurred on by this, Osamu lets himself act more naturally.

Something makes sense, finally, and so he lets himself be wrapped up in this feeling, lets the boy’s grubby hands lead him to a corner of the schoolyard full of kids, crazy kids, kids his mother would have a heart attack to see him interacting with.

And this too is ripped away from him immediately. They get him to come join them in a big fight they’re picking with some kids in the next grade, and he does, and for 10 minutes it’s fun and exciting and it hurts but it feels real and he feels alive, and it feels like nothing at all could ruin it for him until he’s in the principal’s office for breaking someone’s nose. 

The rest of the kids are in the office with him, and none of them seem concerned, and when their parents come to pick them up because of their suspension, he can tell why. Most of the parents don’t care at all, just disinterestedly telling their kids to get a move on and get in the car. A few are drunk, one yells at her son for making her come all the way down from the office, but none of them set any fear into the hearts of their children.

His own mother doesn’t either, really. She’s shocked and confused and scared and nothing panic inducing, so he almost manages to convince himself that this isn’t the end of the world by the time they’re home. His mistake.

As soon as dad is home, any confusion or hesitance she had in scolding him disappears, and dad himself is even worse. He doesn’t know why he cares. He already knew they didn’t love him. But it feels like it’s the end of the world via a sudden lack of oxygen in the atmosphere, and he can barely breathe by the time they tell him to go to his room. 

He does so and immediately collapses in anxiety, a bleeding headache caused by nothing splitting his head in half like a bat coming down on a watermelon. They know. They know they know they know. He’s not perfect and they know now and he’s done for and he passes out on the bedroom floor.

The only normal thought he has in all this is that Ken will probably be overjoyed when he gets home from school.

And it’s correct. When he wakes up, Ken is at the desk, doing homework, and turns around snickering. “Hey you big baby, had a nice nap after your tantrum at school?”

God, he really did end up as bad as Osamu. He’s the world’s shittiest caretaker on record, that’s for sure, and so Ken’s insult makes him feel more self loathing than it does annoy him.

“I’ll have you know that it was a planned fight that all parties agreed on, not some spur of the moment tantrum.”

“Really now? Interesting. I guess you planned to get yourself grounded for two months too?” Ken asks with another cruel snicker.

“It’s not like we’re allowed to do what we want when we’re not grounded, so it doesn’t matter.” He retorts. Ken doesn’t answer, as he always doesn’t when Osamu brings up things like this. He knows what Ken thinks he’s trying to do. Ken thinks that Osamu’s trying to convince him this all sucks so that he’ll step down from the genius bullshit and Osamu can have all the attention again. He’s half right, Osamu will give him that much. 

Minutes worth of awkward silence pass before Osamu decides to get off the floor and moves to the bed so he can think about how his life is over in a comfier position. He pulls the blanket over his head and doesn’t move for the rest of the day, not when Ken finishes using the computer and starts shuffling around some clothes or something, not when mom pops in with tea for the both of them. He’s pretty sure Ken drinks both their cups, and he vaguely wonders what on earth the little guy is doing, but he can’t find the energy to turn around to check, or to ask, so he just falls asleep like that.

The next morning, he finds that it truly is the end of the world and the end of his life. 

Ken ran away from home in the night.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing he ever knew about Ken was that it was his personal duty to care for him. After waiting for what felt like hours and hours, he was brought out of the waiting room into the maternity ward, and they’d let him hold the soft little bundle of baby that was his little brother. His parents told him that he needed to look out for his little brother from then onward, and he believed them.

For all the years that passed after that, he continued to believe it, though everything else they said rang hollow, because besides their words, there was circumstantial evidence that Ken needed him. So Ken was his responsibility. And his one duty in life that never felt painful to carry out.

Now, Ken is gone. 

Osamu has never hated himself so much.

He’s not stupid, he knows he’s not responsible for the actions of his parents or of the people Ken was forced to endure interaction with. But that doesn’t mean it’s not his fault. Because it absolutely is. He didn’t help, didn’t try hard enough to fix everything, didn’t do a good enough job standing in for their parents and that’s why it’s his fault Ken grew up so screwy and his fault Ken ran away.

But he’ll probably never be able to apologize now.

He feels...empty, at the loss of his brother. Sure, Ken might not have loved him, might’ve outright wanted him dead, but he was a comfort, an image of what his life could entail if he could only get his brother to talk with him long enough to plot an escape together. A small family life with no stupid parents who’re hurtful because they don’t know any better.

Now there’s nothing. There’s no hope to cling to, no daydreams to hide in during times of distress. There is only a hole, deep in his chest, a black hole, slowly but inevitably causing him to collapse in on himself.

“How was your photoshoot, dear?” His mother asks.

“Fine, mom.” He lies as naturally as he breathes. He doesn’t know why he bothers with this pretense. His mother doesn’t deserve this illusion. She deserves to be screamed and yelled at. But for some reason, he never seems to do that, no matter how much he wants to. Neither did Ken, but that was probably more of an ‘if he can do it, I can do it too’ kind of resilience, telling himself that the pain is nothing if it means usurping Osamu. Speaking of Ken,

“The police still haven’t found a single lead...Oh, Osamu, I just don’t understand! Why would he do this…?” His mother sniffles and chokes on tears that hold no guilt or remorse. It occurs to him then that he was stupid to believe Ken would ever benefit from his abscence. He could hand her a list of her every failing and she still wouldn’t be able to grasp what her part in Ken’s departure was.

And it’s upon this realization that he finally starts screaming at her.

Anger is, by nature, a feeling that bubbles up all at once, even if you’re only trying to let a little bit out, and so, by the time he’s expended the use of his lungs, what’s been repressed has overflowed and filled up his entire brain, overwhelming his self control with emotions that were never intended to see the light of day. He hates the world and everything, every person, every disgusting stalker fangirl to put a creepy letter in his locker, every adult to ever lean in too close and tell him how cute he is, and he no longer cares if these feelings make him imperfect, because no one in this world is worth the effort their love requires of him, except maybe that of his little brother, who’s no longer in this world and hasn’t loved him for years anyways.

His parents spend hours trying to get him to come out of his room after he locks himself in, but they receive no answer. He never wants to talk to them again, or anyone. He doesn’t wish to hide his rage anymore, doesn’t feel the need to try and calm down, because there’s no one around anymore that needs to be protected from that anger. Everyone left deserves to be wiped out by the storm.

Osamu is glad for this burning feeling, because it lights up the emptiness that he’d been consumed by before. So he holds onto his rage, clings to the feelings it allows and thinks about how much he wants to stab everyone’s eyes out instead of feeling cold and dead and thinking he might as well follow his brother and leave this world forever.

His grades slip off a cliff and he pulls his dresser in front of the door when his mom tries to drag him to therapy about it. He’s done. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything. The volcano’s eruption lasts for days, as he spends his days either slacking off in his room or sneaking out of the house to get supplies for himself at any given moment.

And at the end of the first week, Osamu burns down several filming studios, every one he’s been in throughout his life, in fact. Every non-living thing that he’s ever hated goes up in flames.

But he doesn’t feel better. Why doesn’t he feel better?

He still feels angry, and besides the anger, he still feels nothing. Where’s the part of him that feels warm? Alight? The part that floats him up in the air, with all of Ken’s bubbles, high above the abyss?

Did Ken take it with him?

He must’ve. That’s the most logical explanation. So Osamu can’t be happy unless Ken comes back. 

And Ken is never coming back.

Osamu wonders what he has left in Ken’s absence. He comes up with nothing. Nothing, nothing mattered as much to him as taking care of Ken did. His love for his parents died years ago. His enjoyment of being a prodigy died around the same time. And he was never given enough time in the day to foster a love for anything else. 

So he’s alive now for no reason at all. But he can’t die, there’s a reason for that, at least.

As uncomfortable as the wording of Ken’s goodbye letter was, he knows Ken no longer being in this world just means he left through the computer. And if he left through the computer, he might have access to the internet, and cable, and news networks. And there’s no way Osamu could also leave earth without it being on every news station still standing.

He may be an awful brother, but he doesn’t want Ken to be sad.

So, with no other viable route of escape presenting itself to him, Osamu turns to the thing that they say sad people fall back on. Alcohol. It doesn’t really make him feel happy or better in any capacity, but it fills up the void in his chest, only slightly, so he keeps drinking it. 

When Ken finally comes home, his big brother is unconscious, arm dangling over the top bunk, looking like death and surrounded by an egregious amount of canned sake and beer. 

Hours later, Osamu opens his eyes again to finds Ken in his bed, hugging him tightly, and he starts crying and muttering lethargically about what a nice dream that is.

Ken cries too. Osamu hasn’t seen him cry since he was seven. His voice is so quiet, so soft, in stark contrast to the harshness with which he’s been spoken to for years and years.“...I’m sorry, I hurt you…I’m so sorry...”

“...It’s ok...I hurt you first...so I deserved to be hurt…” It’s all a dream, right? Ken would never be sorry, would never sound like he used to. Osamu failed him too much for that to ever happen. But when Ken squeezes him tighter, cries even harder, it feels so real…

“I’ll look after you better this time...I’ll be a good big brother for you this time, I promise…” Dreams are for fantasies, right? He can pretend...he can pretend just for a little while that everything can be ok now… “I love you so much...I should’ve told you every day…”

Ken cries in his arms, clings to him like a life saver, and for a moment, Osamu can convince himself that this isn’t a dream, that his existence is worth something. That even if he was the biggest failure who ever existed, he can atone now, being the big brother he’s always wanted to be.

It takes an uninterrupted hour of crying for Osamu to fully wake up and become aware that maybe Ken should’ve disappeared by now. He cups Ken’s face, smooths his hair, and is undone by how real it feels. He can no longer comfort, only cry uncontrollably himself.

“You’re back...you’re really back…”

Not much is done for the rest of that day besides crying and snuggling. After his parents have fallen asleep, he goes out and brings back two plates of food for the both of them. It takes a few instances of this for his parents to notice the surplus of plates being used up by what should be Osamu’s singular meals, and once they do, they resume anew the door-banging that they’d previously given up.

Ken gives in almost immediately despite Osamu’s attempts to dissuade him. Their mother cries with joy, and Ken cries too. Osamu feels nothing, says nothing. He only speaks to Ken, once they’re alone in their room again, and doesn’t address the tearful heartfelt scene that occurred outside it. When he starts going more freely between the kitchen and bedroom, his mother asks him why he feels the need to glare so hatefully at her, and he never answers.

He doesn’t follow Ken back to school on Monday morning.

Instead, once their parents are out of the house, he applies for an entry level job at a daycare. The decision to work at a daycare, of course, is because child minding is the only non-academic activity he was allowed to have any expertise in. His face is immediately recognized, and he’s hired on the spot. He sets it up so he’s directly handed his paychecks instead of being mailed them, so that his parents can’t hold them ransom once they find out what Osamu’s plans for the future are.

And at dinnertime, he reveals those plans. He is dropping out of school. There are many distraught, upset, angry questions hurled at him that evening. He answers none of them, as none of them come from Ken. He still hasn’t directly said a word to either of them since his screaming fit weeks ago, and he plans to continue that. 

Every day, his dad makes a point of telling him how disappointed he is. After a while, he’s numb to it, and the words can’t hurt him anymore. Just as planned. 

Why not even a basic college degree, they ask. Why, Osamu, why? He doesn’t answer, of course, because the answer is obvious. School, the teachers who took notice of his talent, that’s what damned him. So the most logical course of action is to separate himself from it, so that it can never be used to hurt him again. 

Even if the route he’s chosen ends with him homeless, at least he’ll be there by the course of his own decisions, and not the life that his parents planned out for him. He said that to Ken, and Ken was very worried about it, but Ken is worried about everything nowadays, so that’s moot point. 

While Ken is certainly a lot more of an anxious mess now, he’s also calmer, less hateful. Osamu is thankful that he can finally breathe easy around the one member of his family whom he’s fond of, but he’d prefer it if he could make that anxiety and sadness to go away. 

He tries a lot of things. He tries to be warm, and loving, and cuddly for him. Gives Ken his undivided attention whenever he’s home. None of it seems to work, at least not to the extent he wants it to. It’s as he’s always known. Ken is the gentle, loving one. He’s incapable of properly expressing those kind emotions in return. He was never taught them. He was never loved or hugged or coddled. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do.

Ken never needed to be taught. Even though Osamu could never have been a proper example, Ken seemed to have all the tools he needed to be this precious, soft little child who knew of foreign things like warmth and kindness regardless of his caretaker’s shortcomings. Ken was always just...better than him. A better person. The person he always wished he could’ve been. It’s ironic, really. They both see their best selves in each other, have both always wanted to be each other. Though now it seems that Ken has seen, just as he has, the lack of value in intelligence, no longer chasing after the podium as he once did.

He also has friends now. Osamu isn’t jealous, though he was initially worried he might be. It’s fortunate that he can hear them laughing in the bedroom and only think that he’s glad to hear Ken’s laugh again. 

But. He is jealous of something. He’s not jealous of Ken having friends, but, incredibly selfishly, watching the positive impact they have on Ken puts a sting in his chest. Why couldn’t he do that? He’s Ken’s big brother. He’s been taking care of Ken his whole life. He should get to show Ken how to be happy again.

Osamu stamps down the stupid, unneccesary thoughts with fervour. That’s stupid. His brain is being stupid. He doesn’t know how to be happy, he couldn’t possibly teach someone else how to do it. That’s just dumb. He should just be happy that Ken’s life is getting better.

And he is, but the envy lingers.

How stupid.

Compartmentalizing it as idiotic helps him to ignore it for the most part, so he keeps doing that and lets Ken have fun with his friends, never letting his feelings be known. Ken sometimes asks about it anyways, which is annoying to try and work around, as well as a bitter reminder that his stupidity in this regard is no new trait. It manifested before, in biting insults thrown at Ryou for hanging around his little brother all the damn time. And then that guy like, died, or something, and he felt bad about it, but here he is doing the same shit again. Well, not doing the same shit, he knows better how to repress such reactions, but still holding the same attitudes.

One of Ken’s new friends could die out of nowhere, too, and just like before, he won’t be able to be of any comfort if Ken is under the impression that big brother hates them.

With this brought to his attention, Osamu makes a newfound effort to be nice to Ken’s friends. In time, he learns each of them, and comes to view them as surrogate siblings, almost in a more typical sibling fashion than Ken, seeing as playful jabbing and mockery won’t result in a tantrum, or a tearful instance of Ken not getting that it’s a joke. This casual camaraderie kills the sting of envy, and he scarcely notices its absence, but once he does, he finds it...odd. He feels odd, nowadays. He feels something foreign. Not happiness, but...happiness adjacent. 

He feels...unthreatened. Yes, that’s the word he’s looking for. He doesn’t look suspiciously towards the shadows of alleyways anymore. He doesn’t cast worried glances in the direction of Ken and his friends, worried that feelings will be hurt and comforting will be required of him. He is safe, in a loose sense of the term. His ex-fans have lost interest in him. His parents have lost hope in him as a source of revenue. His manager can’t reach him anymore. 

His day to day sources of stress have been removed. He is free, for the first time in his life.

Osamu wonders why he still isn’t all that happy.

There seems to be no more flaws in his state of living, aside from the daily scorn of his parents and whatever teachers he runs into at the supermarket. Did his happiness break, when he was too young to understand the cause of it’s passing, never to be brought back again?

...No, that can’t be it. Ken lost his happiness back then too, and it’s back now. It must be salvageable. He just...needs to figure out how to salvage it.

To retrace his steps from the time it was initially lost, Osamu makes a list of all the things he had or did back when he had his happiness, that he doesn’t have now. After a while of staring at his grocery list of childhood pleasures, he comes to his first hypothesis.

He puts together a small batch of bubble mix.

Blowing into the straw several times over, he fails each attempt to form a proper bubble. He was always shit at this. Osamu supposes that he could ask Ken to blow the bubbles, but that would be ridiculous, embarrassing, and probably invite a lot of questions that he doesn’t actually know the answers to.

So he has to accomplish this feat by himself. 

He eventually has to make a new, larger batch, because he burned through the first without a single success. But he’s not going to be defeated by bubbles. He begins his conquest anew. And fails anew.

It takes a third batch and half an hour for him to draw the most obvious conclusion ever: treating this like a battle against a fragile substance that needs to be treated with care isn’t going to work. That’s why it never worked before. He’s too rough. At the time blowing bubbles had been a relevant activity to his day to day life, he’d given up on the prospect of mending this, sure that if he couldn’t do it innately, he couldn’t do it at all, unused to challenging himself in any way whatsoever. And so he left it to Ken’s deep rooted softness to provide the bubbles for him. 

He’s spent too long struggling on this balcony to do that again, though.

With his new strategy in mind, he picks up the straw again. He fails. And then he fails again. And then he fails at least three dozen more times. But, after the period of trial and error needed to readjust his strategy has passed, he...succeeds. A part of him flies away in that tiny, shitty bubble, half the size of the ones Ken could produce. The part of him that thought of these bubbles as a metaphor for himself, his inability to be a gentle person. Always trying so very hard to do it right, and beefing it at the last second. The seven year old angsty philosopher in him floats up into the sky until Osamu can’t see it anymore.

It’s been laid to rest and sent up to heaven. In its absence, he smiles.

This excursion had started out as an almost silly little experiment, but he’s glad he did it, now. He feels...lighter. Weird.

Osamu blows more bubbles, to show himself that it wasn’t a dumb fluke, and he finds himself smiling wider when he keeps succeeding. This is silly. Really silly. It doesn’t actually account for his shortcomings as directly as his seven year old self was convinced they were and it’s weird for him to place such sentimental value on the little bubbles while actively knowing that. 

But it makes him feel warmer inside, so Osamu doesn’t care. He uses up all the mixture, and then refills it and empties it another time before he tires of it.

Time passes. Osamu changes.

Maybe the daycare is tapping into the coddling part of him that existed in the very beginning, or maybe the bubble thing helped open up some mental blockage that’d been torturing him, but he...eases up. Unwinds.

Ken says his hugs seem softer. Osamu has never felt so in awe of a compliment paid to him before. His first crayon drawing gift he gets from a young toddler is something he’s sure that he’ll cherish for the rest of his life.

Even more so than before, his parent’s disappointment means nothing to him. He’s sure, now. This is exactly where he wants to be, and he’s becoming the brother he always daydreamed of being. The kind big brother that doesn’t slip on emotions like a looney toon on a banana.

Ken starts coming to him during nightmares again, just like old times, except this time he can offer more than a pat on the back. Of course, it would be better if Ken didn’t have nightmares in the first place, but this is better than having to sneak his teddy into his arms and hoping it works.

Things are...ok. Not great, of course, things are never great. But they’re better. And after everything, Osamu can certainly deal with being stuck in the state of ‘better’.

...Yeah. Better is fine.

Just fine.


End file.
